Asus ROG Ally vs Steam Deck: Can powerful new technology deliver a game-changing handheld?

Here it is – and as promised by the manufacturer Asus – faster than expected. It’s been just over a year since the Asus ROG Ally Steam Deck added a new dimension to PC gaming: portability. No longer the domain of the bedroom or the office, it’s now possible to play your games library anywhere, and not just your legacy titles, but the latest triple-A epics… to a degree. The Steam Deck struggles with the latest demanding games, but the Asus ROG Ally not only offers the hardware specification upgrades we love to see added to the Deck – but also increases anything up to 71 percent in gaming performance. So what will happen?

At the heart of the Ally sits AMD’s latest mobile APU – dubbed the Z1 Extreme. This looks like a tweaked rendition of the flagship ‘Phoenix’ silicon, specifically the Ryzen 7 7840U. The CPU core count doubles with Steam Deck and frequencies increase significantly, leveraging the latest Zen4 designs. Meanwhile, the GPU has 50 percent more compute units, improvements in the RDNA 3 architecture, and — once again — a lot more frequency. 16GB LPDDR5 on the 128-bit memory interface completes the main specification. At this point, it’s not entirely clear how the Z1 Extreme differs from the 7840U, as those specs are pretty much the same right down to the new 4nm processor node — another advantage with the deck’s 7nm design.

Note that in the specs table below, I’ve similarly included specs from the new handset – the AyaNeo Air Plus. I’ve added this to the mix since it’s based on the 6nm Ryzen 7 6800U, AMD’s last generation flagship: think of it as an iterative step from Deck’s custom AMD Van Gogh APU. It is built from the same building blocks as the ship but uses a much larger CPU and GPU. We’ll see how the new AMD flagship compares to the old one in the review, but you’ll notice that the basic configuration is very similar to the Z1 Extreme.

Opening the box, there is not much on the package. The handle itself is directly under the lid without any protection (which is annoying) with papers placed directly there, a 65W power supply and a power cable. Asus has provided a separate charger that doubles as a USB hub and has an HDMI 2.0 output, but that will be a separate purchase for consumers – it’s a bit odd to have video and USB outputs on a plug, but it’s there. . I recommend the more common USB-C hub instead.

The design of the handheld itself is surprisingly good. The Ally is easy to hold with compact grips, Xbox-like front buttons, stick and D-pad mounted shoulder buttons, and familiar triggers. On the back sit two ‘paddle’ style buttons, with RGB accents also running around the sticks.

The IO has power and volume buttons, a single USB-C, microSD slot, and a 3.5mm stereo jack for headphones. There’s also a PCIe interface to connect Asus’ line of mobile GPUs up to the RTX 4090, where Ally’s iGPU has been swapped out in favor of an external processor. This frees up the CPU to fully utilize the memory bandwidth and power budget, no longer having to compete with the Radeon 780M for resources. The IO does the job, but I’d appreciate an extra USB-C or two (the AyaNeo 2 has three!).

There are two additional elements of the hardware design that I would like to point out for praise. First of all, the screen is very good – bright, excellent color reproduction. It’s a 1080p panel that runs at 120Hz and supports FreeSync. The adaptive sync range seems to be 48Hz to 120Hz, if you change the panel to 60Hz the VRR is completely disabled… so don’t do it. Although aiming for 40fps takes you outside of the VRR window, switching to standard v-sync still makes for smooth gameplay, as 40fps is actually split into 120Hz output.

Another interesting point is that with v-sync off, screen tearing is available in the usual horizontal way. Mobile devices like the Steam Deck and AyaNeo (and certainly the Nintendo Switch) actually use recycled mobile portraits, so screen tearing appears worse than usual when moving from left to right – this explains why Steam Deck and Switch. All games with v-sync enabled.

The second exemplary point to highlight is the cooling arrangement. You’ll hear a lot about the Ally’s cooler design – twin fans, zero-gravity thermal system, fluid dynamic buffer, 0.1mm ultra-thin fins, but the truth is this is the quietest PC gaming handheld I’ve ever tried. It’s a bigger switch than the Steam Deck at both 15W Performance and 25W Turbo modes. The fans only go hard in the 30W main turbo mode, but even then it’s still relatively quiet overall.

Starting with the overall hardware design, the Alley does almost everything an enthusiast would want from a Steam Deck – with superior cooling and a sub-screen with excellent solutions. However, it’s still a Windows handheld – and SteamOS has shown it can be a front-end game-changer on deck. On top of that, Windows could not really free itself with a streamlined design. Battery life can be a challenge on deck – but it’s tough on a Windows machine and as we’ll see on the next page, the Asus ROG Ally doesn’t crack that.

Asus ROG Ally vs Steam Deck Review

• Introduction, hardware, details [This Page]
• Software, power modes, battery life
• Game parameters: Controller, Forza Horizon 5, God of War
• Game Specifications: Cyberpunk 2077, Plague Tales: Requiem, The Return, Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition
• Great specs and performance, poor battery life and bugs: The Digital Foundry verdict

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